Things & Stuff

1.  New Media Market… The Tablet eBooks and Smarter Phones
Apple continues their quest to reshape and own media distribution; from music and film to books and newspapers. The Apple iPad tablet and the updated iPhone OS v4.0 are key to putting devices into consumers’ hands that they love and most crucially, use to buy media online from iTunes and iBooks. Google is using their Android mobile OS and Chrome browser to build competing opportunities, irrespective of electronic device. After a great Christmas, Amazon’s Kindle 3G fights to hold sales against upcoming PC tablets by adding application support and color screens. All will be winners in the new media market - whether it saves traditional broadcast media and their associated advertising revenue is another question.

2.  Personal Media 
The promise of personalized media is jumping the chasm from early-adopter into the mainstream. Media owners realize they can no longer dictate what audiences consume through editorial and marketing. Subscription and advertising revenues are increasingly coming from on-demand, highly personalized, rich media based on each consumer’s individual taste, mode and moment.

3.  Local Is Where It’s At 
Location-based services are central to social media better integrating with real-world activities. This provides brands with new opportunities and challenges for effective audience engagement; relevance, recommendation, participation and safe social interaction.Checking-in to your local café and checking-out the whereabouts of your friends is at early-adoption in Europe. Social networking technology is increasing better integrated with real-life locations, contacts, places, activities, buzz and even Augmented Reality… easily available at your local App Store.

4. Real-Time Friction 
Twitter, Facebook, Google and a raft of location-based services are fighting for ownership of real-time information. Trending of hot topics and breaking news is real currency for audience attention (adoption, ad sales), search engines integration (Google vs. Bing) and data sales (for trend watching, news etc…).So social networks continue to switch-off more default privacy settings. Meanwhile, privacy advocates are investigating and savvy consumers are learning how to lock down their profiles.

Whoever the winner, static content that is updated infrequently will be increasingly ignored, with ‘now’ being more and more important to consumers in 2010.5.  Green Design is the New Black  
Copenhagen 2009 summit added momentum to green thinking (if little solid agreement). CES had a strong showing of new green Consumer Electronics that balance affordability and sustainability. The continuing trend is for authentic product design that improves the consumer’s (perceived) contribution to saving the planet; beautiful products with lower energy consumption, an increased focus on monitoring energy usage and (thanks to a weak economy) new ways to save money. Eco is now more than an ideal in Europe. It is increasingly central to consumer demand and brand equity.

6.  Touchy, Wavy Interfaces 
It’s hard to miss the jump in computer accessibility with touch-interfaces such as the Apple iPhone. Microsoft’s Project Natal is pushing controller-less interaction as the way of inspiring new audiences, the way that Nintendo Wii attracted families and women to their gaming system. Apple’s upcoming iPad tablet will of course be both touch and gesture lead. The new Apple Magic Mouse is following this important and crucially, patented trend.

7.  Hey You, Get on the Cloud
Gmail is ubiquitous. File storage is shifting to the ‘cloud’ and despite outage fears, adoption of new web services are growing. Music and film distribution is no longer about ownership of physical media such as a DVDs and increasingly about access to huge subscription-lead services. Personal information such as photos is also building value; personal value, social currency and as a platform for advertising revenue. iTunes is joining the fray with their acquisition of Lala, an on-demand music service. Amazon and Windows Azure battle for adoption of their web services for use in online applications. Google is betting on the cloud as the future of applications with Google Office and Chrome OS. Microsoft is responding with web services built into Office 2010, including a free online version.8.  Pretty, Usable Design
In 2010, ideas will be expressed online in an increasingly design-focused way. Evolving standards are finally unlocking the web designer’s pent-up creativity; new tools in CSS3.0, Adobe CS5 and more featurepacked CMS software allow simple, expressive design to happen more frequently and easily online. We will see more use of typography as designers no longer need to use standard fonts; flexible multi- and single page layouts; straight-to-mobile compatibility; useful pop-up modal boxes; tablet and newbiecompatible magazine layouts…

9.  Baby Boomers & Gen X Discover Health Informatics
Baby Boomers are retiring and health is more front of mind. Services from running to illness to alcohol and food consumption are available. These services are creating a more informed and in-control patient. Microsoft is pinning its hopes on owning the health informatics space with the launch the Health Vault. Mobile technology has improved health and lifestyle choices by enabling recording and viewing information into the hands (and lives) of consumers. GPS enabled, heart monitoring running apps such as Garmin’s Forerunner are a boon for Gen X wanting the motivation and direction on keeping fit.

10.  Hello Newbees!
Adoption of Internet technologies, especially social and mobile continues to grow. More new users are entering the market. There is also a big shift shift from passive to active participation. There are also some hot-spots in Europe. Eastern and Southern countries present new opportunities to actively engage consumer audiences that were only previously accessible by broadcast media.

What Does This Mean For Brands in 2010?
Brands need to evolve in three areas:1.  Active Campaigning
The shift to digital especially amongst Gen X and Gen Y has happened and 2009 saw big budgets move from broadcast media. These budgets are still often spent on buy, launch and leave campaigns; created, laid out in a media plan and later measured with reach and attitude shifts. In 2010 this approach will be increasingly be less successful as audiences crave engagement that is relevant, real-time and participatory.

What will be more successful in 2010 are brands that:
• Go beyond sharable content and useful applications. Build ideas for audience participation, contribution, adaptation and socialization.
• Ongoing commitment to engaging with consumers. Brands who seed, encourage and reward outside the traditional start-stop campaign periods will be rewarded with higher consumer loyalty than their competitors.
• Less brand sites and more community integration. Engagement authentically in places where consumers socialize and undertake their interests.2.  Focus on Your Most Valuable Consumers
The decline of attention to broadcast media means brands need to re-think mass market, once a year awareness building campaigns. Brands should look for lots of creative ideas, each that resonates with their truly valuable consumers. This is not a shift from advertising products or big ideas. However, brands should better exploit the fact that their most-valuable consumers are more online, more mobile, more social and more vocal than ever.

In 2010, brands need to:
• Talk to smaller consumer niches; less mass-market selling. Ideas that usefully fulfill the needs of your most valuable and growable customers.
• Make it local. Use social and mobile technology to customize, personalize and integrate ideas with the audience’s local environment.
• Love data. Information is more than just results. It’s the mechanism for allowing niche-thinking to happen. Brands therefore need a stronger value-exchange to gather data to make their digital experiences exceptional.3.  Instill Design Thinking
Design in marketing has traditionally focused on graphics, packaging and set construction. Design should be a ethos that runs from product conception right the way through to selling and customer support. Therefore brands will be increasingly successful when marketing is an extension of the way products are designed, rather than just shifting mindsets from A-to-B and discounting purchase.

Therefore brands need creative ideas based more on Design Thinking:
• Function. What do you want consumers to do and how is this participation rooted in demonstrating product relevance and advantage?
• Context. What environment, mode and moment are you engaging consumers? How might your brand and products usefully fit with this context?
• Materials. What useful utility will your content and functionality provide? How will they enhance product understanding and differentiation?
• Construction. How will you build your idea using digital technology? Will it be tightly controlled, user adaptable, touchable, mobile, sharable…?Adrian Jarvis